I’ve been a little MIA with blogging, because I’ve been having a bit of a blog crisis. Here’s the truth: It’s almost impossible to come up with a new recipe to share every single day. It’s even harder to actually eat all of the food that I cook, assuming that I can find the time to come up with a new recipe, prepare it, photograph it, upload photos, and write a post about it. So, I’m broadening the scope of this blog. You can still expect to find some recipes here, along with photos of some of the stuff I eat and other food related stuff, but I’m going to have to write a bit more about my life in general in order to keep this thing moving.

This brings me to the most recent issue on my mind: staying active in winter, in a really cold and disgusting climate. Exercise is easy in the spring and summer, and even fall is pretty damn nice. But in Wisconsin, when temperatures start to drop well below freezing, I am not motivated to move. I am motivated to sit on the couch with a cup of tea and a book and wait for winter to be over. It’s only November, and I’m already noticing a decrease in my activity level. The sun setting at 4PM doesn’t help.

In winter, I tend to eat a diet that is lower in greens and other vegetables and much higher in bread, potatoes, desserts, and heavy “comfort foods”, than my normal diet during the rest of the year. Yes, they are warm and cozy and delicious foods, but they also make me feel extremely sluggish, bloated, and sleepy. Definitely not conducive to maintaining any level of activity. Of course, the holidays make things a little more difficult. Like a lot of people, I tend to not really pay attention to what I eat during the holiday season. When January 1 rolls around, the combination of seriously decreased activity and seriously increased junk food intake has me feeling totally drained.

I would like to make this year different.

This year, I am committing to moving 100 miles in the month of December. This includes any walking or running outdoors or on the treadmill.

Why 100 miles? It’s reasonable, and it’s significantly more than I would normally do during a winter month. It’s an average of about 3.23 miles a day. This seems pretty low, and there’s no doubt that I do that without even thinking during the summer months. However, December is a busy, cold month, and I am acknowledging that there will be days when I will get very little exercise, or even none at all. In short, I want to set a reachable goal so that I can be successful.

In addition to the exercise component of this goal, I am committing to a healthy diet that will energize my body instead of making it feel tired and sluggish. I’m not saying that I’m going to eat perfectly through the holidays, but I am committing to eating well and treating my body with kindness instead of parking it on the couch and loading it up with christmas cookies for an entire month.

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About alimental

I am a recent college grad who loves preparing and eating good, healthy food. I live in Milwaukee with my husband and our two cats.